Is Python your only programming language?

[Peter Hansen]

Joe Cheng wrote:
> 
> I want to ask you hard-core c.l.p Pythonistas: Do you use Python for
> everything?  (and I'm counting Python + C extensions as just Python)  Or do
> you keep another language equally close at hand, and if so, what is it?  

We do web, systems/application, and embedded programming (that's the kind of 
thing where you have a little 16-bit micro with 1K of RAM to play with, nothing
to do with "embedding and extending" ala Python).  The web work is all
Python (back end) plus a tiny bit of Javascript.  The systems/app work is 
all Python.  The embedded stuff is part Python, on the larger embedded 
system which can handle it, and part C, on the tiny micros where Python 
has no hope, plus a few hundred lines of Assembly code.

On a day-to-day basis, over 95% of what we do is Python.

> And finally, do you foresee a day when Python can be, for all 
> practical intents and purposes, your only programming language?

No, unless we abandon all embedded programming.  But if you exclude
that special area, where basically little but C has a foothold, and 
you exclude the client-side web stuff where Javascript is the only
serious option, then we are already using Python as our *only* language,
and I have no intention of letting that change any time soon.  There
is a *huge* benefit, often much underestimated, in maintaining only 
a small set of technologies, including the programming languages a
company/individual actually uses (as opposed to those it knows of).

-Peter